Rekha Basu commentary: U.S. makes strides on gay rights but is still a work in progress

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Thursday March 6, 2014 6:20 AM

Newscasters quickly changed the subject after Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer last week vetoed a bill
that would have let businesses, on the basis of “religious belief,” deny service to gays. Crisis
over, folks, they seemed to say; let’s move on.

But the fact that a majority in both houses of the legislature of the sixth-largest state were
poised to legalize anti-gay discrimination suggests that it could happen again, in Arizona or any
state where a governor lacks the decency, sense or guts to go against the majority in her
party.

There is a sad irony to that, coming on the heels of the Sochi Olympics and our vocal disdain
for Russia’s anti-gay laws. “I have no patience for countries that try to treat gays or transgender
persons in ways that intimidate them or are harmful to them,” President Barack Obama said last
summer. Yet there it is, in his own country. Though he declined to boycott the Olympic Games, Obama
underscored his commitment to gay equality in the choice of people he sent to represent the United
States.

The organization Human Rights First, which sounded the alarm on last year’s anti-gay
anti-propaganda bill signed by Russian President Vladimir Putin, urged the United States to be a
beacon to activists fighting for freedom around the globe. “Upholding human rights is not only a
moral obligation,” it said. “It’s a vital national interest.”

On the other side, there is this view summed up in a blog post on the
New York Times website: “We here in the United States don’t need to be forcing our own
ideals and laws on the rest of the countries across the globe. We believe our ideals are correct,
and Russia believes their ideals are correct.”

That raises the question: What are our ideals on gay issues, anyway? Are they those of Obama,
John McCain and Mitt Romney, who oppose the discriminatory Arizona bill? Or of the Arizona
lawmakers, and legislators in other states like Kansas contemplating similar bills? Are they the
values of 17 states that have recognized same-sex marriage, or of those who campaign against
it?

While the Obama administration shows one face to Russia, American crusaders against gay rights
have been showing a different one to Uganda. U.S. pastors deserve some of the blame for an
outrageous law signed last week by President Yoweri Museveni, which imposes life in prison for
being gay there. It also provides for up to seven-year prison terms for people gay or straight, who
house or refuse to report gays to authorities. Companies and nongovernmental organizations doing
business in Uganda that support lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender people could lose their
registrations and face jail time.

Uganda’s law falls short of calling for the death penalty for LGBT people, as an earlier bill
had done, following visits by U.S. evangelicals Scott Lively, Rick Warren and Tony Perkins in 2008
and 2009.

Lively, who has talked about “curing” homosexuals, was one of three evangelical Christians to
meet with politicians and speak on the threat of the “gay agenda” to thousands of Ugandans in 2009.
The death-penalty bill was introduced a month later. Warren, who visited in 2008, has compared
homosexuality to pedophilia, though he denied playing a role in that bill and condemned it.
Perkins, the president of the Family Research Council, praised the Ugandan bill and complains that
Arizona’s “once gutsy” Gov. Brewer has “buckled.”

So, should the world see same-sex marriages and gays serving openly in the military and conclude
that America is an open and accepting nation? Or should it hear Rush Limbaugh mouthing off about
Brewer being bullied by the “homosexual lobby” and conclude the opposite?

The truth is, we’re a work in progress, guided by a constitution that points us on a path of
greater equality, but is regularly challenged and undermined. We have no franchise on either human
rights or prejudices. But we do have the right to protest and a legacy of organizing and speaking
up for rights, and bringing businesses and politicians along — even if just for practical
reasons.

So when we sigh with relief over the bullet that was dodged in Arizona last week, let’s remember
the one that wasn’t, in Uganda — and our power and responsibility, as a nation committed to human
rights, both to export the right values and to abide by them at home.